The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 28, 1906, Page 10

( A bold, to the men and fair 1 Never a yard rose fierce the hea le in the even- ens; never Pavr Eve Stevenson, AUTHOR OF “A DEEP WATER VOYAGOGE . CAPE AND ng breeze when the men tautened up night in the trades. A grand n he was, and thirty years of the 1 had Jeft him In the helght of his e else had ever conned me and calm since the hour »efore when I had slid into old Xennebec and heard th¢ s daughter mumur “I name the4 S When James Stanford have to get the main off her, Mr. Williams,* or "ds better loose the skysalls was all right, and I never brace or backstay as long as on deck. d carried him through all the of the world, and as long as he ad charge of the deck I never lost a spar nor split a wisp of canvas. -And what weather we had seen, my master and me! 1 had clawed off the Pesca- dores in & typhoon under the lower top- salls and the head of the spanker when a dozen of my sisters, dismasted shattered, foundered in the snarl of the China Seas, I had run my easting down bound out to Yokohama with a hundred thousand cases of petroleum, with the fore and main topgallant m: gone, because a poor fool of a coud mate did not call Cap'n Jim for the southerly buster that caught us under the the Crozets I had worked out through the Sunda Straits thet day that Krakatoa threw ten cubic miles of rock thirty thousand feet into the air and annihilated Anjer. Stanford always said that no other ship that swam could have done this, but I knew better. I knew that It was only his skill that could have worked us out of death’s hug as he stood there by the weather quarter bits and guided us through the straits, with pumice falling on the decks like a hot fog and the roar of hell in the alr. And light sails away over near THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. thus, affer time had passed on, I cama to reverence, to love the man whose heroic nerve had guided me through the strife of Nature into glassy bays and pleasant ports. Death he feared not; and his deep barytone would boom out over the gale “Main tops'l, haul!” 1. In due time we picked up the South Shoal, off Sankaty Head, when a nor'- wester found us and blew us off shore again, till the Gulf Stream thawed us out. we raised the Highland. Light out of the sea and made fast to a .pler just below the Bridge. It had been a sixty- day passage, bitter weather all the way over, and the men were glad enough to get ashore and let the stevedores discharge the chalk that I had brought over as hallast, Late one afternoon when the sun was &inking into the Jersey marshes I made out the upper spars of a very large ship towing in past the Narrows and up across the bay. In a short time her hull was visible, and I saw that it was of iron or steel—one of those hateful metal pots that tinkers solder together nowadays, and that wallow about awash In a seaway llke a half. tide rock. The huge stranger had a Wretch- ed, bob tailed bowsprit made of a sin- gle stub of steel and that stuck up into the air llke a hoodlum'’s cigar. and four masts as squatty as a geordie brig's. From the first moment that I and another week passed before ' clapped eyes on the vessel I disliked her: and when I saw that she was go- ing to warp into the slip next to me I Wwas not sorry that 1 was to go to sea agein in ten days or so. I was begin- ning tb long for the blue ocean orce more, and for a glimpse of my old cap- tain, .when James Stanford himself stepped out of the charthouse on the stranger’s quarterdeck. With him was a man whom I had never seen before, though I knew he was a seaman by the way he threw his eye aloft when he came on deck.‘ A “Yes, Tom, she's the finest timber ship the State of Maine ever turnad Captain Stanford was saying .to the other as they walked down the skeleton ladder, “and it fair breaks my heart to give her up, but come on board and have a look round.” They stepped over the side without any trouble, for 1 was loaded now and floated three-fourths low in the HP water, and Stanford sang out to his mate: “Mr. Williams, this is Cap'n Graham, who's golng to take command of the ship. The ownmers have transferred me to the Monhegan over there, but,” with a deep breath, “It goes hard against me to give up the old ship for a new one, and a tinpot at that.” And he looked about at the sweep of the decks and up at the golden trucks, shaking his head. and then glanced over at his new mistress that floated stumpy and sullen across the pier. As for me, I was so horrified and astounded that a stupor fell upon me, and I remember nothing till I heard Captain Graham saying, “Oh, well, she looks to be a middling smart packet, does this one, though there are some things as ain’t to my way o' thought. All them gratin's and fixin's and the brass bands on the scuttle butts give her the look o' the paint faced harples "JHIP T on the beach. Still, them things don't count for so very much if she omy does her work. Where yer bound to, Cap'n, ef tain't askin’ too much?”’ Captain Stanford eyed the other grimly. “To the same port as you are—San Fran- clsco. I've just recelived a telegram ordering me to Baltimore for a load of coal, and the towboat’ll be alongside In the morning. You've nearly finished loading, and by the time they throw five thousand tons of Baltimore's best into the Monhegan we'll both be ready ea about the same time.” 11 bet yer a hundred I'll beat yer sald Graham, his eyelids qulver- ing with the gambler’s avarice. “No; I don’t care about betting.” an- swered Stanford. “I believe you're scared to,” said the other. “Tell yer what I'll do, I'll lay ye a hundred to seventy-five that I'll pass 50 south before you do.” “I tell you, no,” answered Captain Jim. *“Do you think I'd bet against the old love?” My heart trembled at the loyalty of my first and only lover, and when the dawn came drifting in the next morn- ing and showed the tug backing out with the hated Monhegan and I saw James Stanford at the break of the poop, calling his orders in his organ tones, and then turn and bare his head in a long, final gaze, a scorn and re- pugnance swelled within me for the ship that had taken him away. Jeal- ousy filled me. Bitter revenge would be mine. I would follow her through storm and calm, tropic breéze and sleety gale. Yes,. I would follow and destroy the ugly wench, with her slaty plates and thick spars and hooded wheel—an unspeakable ship that should be my, prey on which to execute the vengeance that fired my living form.. ur On the first day of May we shipped a crew, and early iIn the foremoon a coupla of towboats churned glonz:lflé and passed us their lines. I was very deep in the water, with ndt more than seven feet of freeboard. and it was to be a winter passage of the Horn. The owners, though, had stepped a new O (L2 foremast and bent new runping gear throughout, and as we swept out by the Southwest Spit, with all bands sheeting home the topgallant sails, the jackies on an ward bound battleship velled a hurrah for the Cape Horner and her Yankee crew, We picked up the northeast trades in 50 west in a few days and snored away to the southward under the skysalls, with the signals calling “How are you?”' now and then to chance acquain- tances. Like powdered glass broke the blue swells under my forefoot, and the dolphins flashed by at night In swirls of flame. The planets and constella- tions swung aloft like golden candela- bra and the old landmark, Polaris, sank deeper and deeper into the northern sky line, Two hundred and fifty miles a day was our record here. and I ought to have beeri a happy ship, booming along under the tufted clouds, with all the braces fast and the theme of the trade wind in the Ivory curves. But happiness had departed from forever. My thoughts were away be yond the horizem, where I knew th Monhegan was purting the trade swell, and I wondered whether the huge sea god that trod her aquarterdeck thought now of his earlier love, wh ever falthful. stoed her sleer'sss watches, smoldering ‘with hate. Times without number I stared into the hort- zon at sight of the upper canvas of some leviathan, trusting to get even a glimpse of the great form. But dis- appointment smothered hope and days crawled by. The carolling trades fainter and more bashful grew as we approached the doldrums, and for days together 1 lay a vain thing upon the sea, my head pointing now south, now east, as the whimsical airs rustled the upper sails. And the globes on my trucks blinked 0$s the sun in the respirations of the tropic seas. Far down on the easterly herizon one afternon I discerned the white tusks of the St. Paul's roeks, dawdling n the heat, and then the next day hummi came the southeast trades and drove the torpid air of the doldrums, and W flew into the South Atlantie, past Fer- Continued on page 1L